Perioperative targeted temperature management of severely burned patients by means of an oesophageal temperature probe

Background: Hypothermia in severely burned patients is associated with a significant in-crease in morbidity and mortality. The use of an oesophageal heat exchanger tube (EHT) can improve perioperative body temperatures in severely burned patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the intraoperative warming effect of oesophageal heat transfer in severe burn patients.Methods: Single-centre retrospective study performed at the Burns Centre of the University Hospital Zurich. Between January 2020 and May 2021 perioperative temperature manage-ment with EHT was explored in burned patients with a total body surface area (TBSA) larger than 30%. Data from patients, who received perioperative temperature management by EHT, were compared to data from the same patients during interventions performed under standard temperature management matching for length and type of intervention.Results: A total of 30 interventions (15 with and 15 without EHT) in 10 patients were ana-lysed. Patient were 38 [26-48] years of age, presented with severe burns covering a median of 50 [42-64] % TBSA and were characterized by an ABSI of 10 [8-12] points. When re-ceiving EHT management patients experienced warming at 0.07 degrees C per minute (4.2 degrees C/h) compared to a temperature loss of - 0.03 degrees C per minute (1.8 degrees C/h) when only receiving standard temperature management (p < 0.0001). No adverse or serious adverse events were reported.Conclusion: The use of an oesophageal heat transfer device was effective and safe in pro-viding perioperative warming to severely burned patients when compared to a standard temperature management protocol. By employing an EHT as primary temperature man-agement device perioperative hypothermia in severely burned patients can possibly be averted, potentially leading to reduced hypothermia-associated complications.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study investigated the intraoperative warming effect of oesophageal heat transfer in severe burn patients. The use of an oesophageal heat transfer device was found to be effective and safe in providing perioperative warming, potentially reducing hypothermia-associated complications in severely burned patients.